Thoughts of Festivals - Latitude 2011 again.

I decided to continue the theme. Almost as soon as I posted the previous one I was already half hoping that someone will convince me to change my mind.
Here are some more photos from Latitude 2011, starting on the main Obelisk Stage again and then working through the others.
  

Wanda Jackson covering Amy Winehouse's 'You Know I'm No Good'.

That it has a clock in it as rather strange: in her introduction to the song Jackson spoke of her concern for Ms. Winehouse's health.  Almost exactly a week later it was announced that she was dead.
  

Isobel Campbell again, on the same stage that her former band Belle and Sebastian had headlined on the Saturday in 2010.

A highlight for me this year, and not just because it is tented and out of the rain, was the Word Arena; they had done a pretty good job of picking the acts for this and they were very varied, which formed the basis of the post about Festival Variety in late July. Here are a couple more pictures from the Saturday.

I have only ever seen a few acts that come from New Zealand performing live. Ladyhawke (second album eagerly awaited) and Otago's Ruby Suns being two that come to mind. This is the lead vocalist of the third one...
  

Alisa Xayalith of The Naked and Famous during a volcanic set.

  

As the rain continued to fall some good old-fashioned party spirit was needed and what better to conjure that than Bellowhead?  Complete with a fiddle-duel.

  

That is the two larger stages done, at least for now, with the Lake Stage and Sunrise Arena to follow soon.

Thoughts on Festivals, 2011 and onwards

Going to festivals is in fact an unexpected bonus that accrued from deciding to start this blog. Put simply it finally gave me the impetus to do something I had long wanted to do, which was to see and hear much more live music. In that time I have spent the equivalent of a month camping and experiencing outdoor festivals and I am in no mind to give it up now, indeed I already have tickets for two such in 2012. It all started with Latitude in 2007 and, after five years I will, more likely than not, give it a miss next year in order to try something else instead.  Here are a few more photos from the Obelisk Stage that I took at Latitude this July and in this case of artists that are well established.

KT Tunstall 

  

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan

    

I thought that both these sets were astonishing, so that is not an issue that I have with Latitude, but I do think that they are in danger of letting the music suffer in the pursuit of the big picture.  This is going to become ever harder on the smaller stages where the bespoke, often more nimble, festivals are able to compete very successfully indeed.

Lykke Li, on The Word Stage at Latitude 2011.

  

This was very good too but, while I didn't see it owing to a clash, I was reliably informed by others, who saw both this and also her subsequent performance at EOTR 2011, that the latter was even better. One might argue that after six years Latitude is maturing with its core audience. I started late in this, at least in the age game, and new music still excites me more than ever. EOTR was also on its sixth edition in 2011 and it just got better.
You can probably see my line of thought here and, with no Glastonbury in 2012 either, it will be interesting to see how the whole dynamic alters.

Sleepless nights and new music...

The perhaps strange title of this post is less so to me. I have so much to write about and have listened to so much at festivals over the summer that it is now almost an inevitability. Some of this struck me whilst I was listening to the radio this last week: all full of students off to university for the first time and pondering the possibilities and pitfalls of Freshers' Week.
It made me think: that seems like a different life now. I tried to think what music I was listening to then. Not much I suspect, and even less that bears remembering let alone sharing with you. That was just short of 28 years ago!
More interesting perhaps is what, now twice-as-old-plus-a-decade-for-good-measure, I then imagined I might be listening to now. I don't think it ever crossed my mind...
One thing that I CERTAINLY never imagined is that I would be here, just now, writing this! Look at it another way - this was the time when CD players were as rare as rocking-horse shit and, once one had invested that money (and we are looking at near £1000 in actual cash then), there was precious little available to play on it and that which there was was mostly classical music.
Since then a great deal has happened, in music as in everything else. In these uncertain times it bears repeating that music has remained a steady companion. Of course it has changed but that is why it endures. I have changed too.
I still hate the person who lived above me in my first-year halls and went away for the weekend leaving Culture Club's 'Colour By Numbers' on continuous-play on their cassette player (remember those?). Even now, if I hear Karma Chameleon, I get flashbacks...
Forgiven but not forgotten. Musically things, mostly, got better after that and it might be time for some reminiscences. There is something about autumn and music for me. They just seem to go well together.

Acoustic+, Frome, September 16, 2011

After a summer recess, following the Frome Festival, the event returned to the Cheese & Grain Friday last.  The turn out was very encouraging and the audience was to hear some great music.

Four acts, as usual all very good, and the first to play was Ali George. Great guitar song-writing and largely unaccompanied.

The second is one that I have somehow managed to miss on more than one occasion previously. They come from Bristol and are Poppy and Friends.

  

There is a new EP - Flagged and Born To Be, just released to d/l (and also as a limited CD)...

  

...almost all of which are not however prone to fraying around the edges.

Next up was Dirk Landish. The album 'Blissful Drunken Blues' should be added to my suggestions for autumnal/fall music (see preceding post) and in this case it is harder to tell from which side of the Atlantic it draws the most inspiration. 

Excellent I thought and seemingly I was far from the only one to think so, at an event that was very well attended. You can listen to much of the album on his site and also buy the album direct from there too.

  

Last, and thus headlining, were Bakudan. Combining African rhythm with other influences they are fusion beyond pigeon-holing. I saw a bit of Tinariwen (at End Of The Road Festival) a couple of weeks back and I didn't really get that. Perhaps it was just a case of live music overload but, whatever the matter, I found this much more accessible and appealing.

  

So much so that, rather than choose between these pictures, here are both of them.

  

All of this for £5.  The next Acoustic+ takes place in the same venue, Cheese & Grain, Frome on October 14, 2011.

Of course you can't wait that long but then you don't have to because Acoustic Moon 2  is barely a week away and also promises a full evening of music for £5.

Not writing much but still listening...

OK. You are probably thinking that after three three-day festivals in six weeks I would, or perhaps should, be posting almost every day. Well. Let's just say it rarely works out quite like that.
It is not that I don't have plenty to write about; quite the opposite as I have heard so much live music that it takes a while for me to think about it all what it meant to me, and how it relates together or doesn't.  I've also been listening to more than a little new music too in the last two months - often just tracks posted as tasters on the internet etc. and while that might further complicate matters in terms of quantity it sometimes provides help in terms of inter-relation. A few of these things will have cropped up as un-linked items on the 'I've Just Listened To...' section on the side-bar, which I have recently moved to near the top as part of an ongoing rearrangement.
I hope to start to get my thoughts on the summer now gone and forthcoming releases trickling out soon but I shall be busy a couple of weekends.
  
Just a little later:
For the several people who have ended up here looking for 'music for Autumn' and/or 'music for Fall' (something I posted about at the start of summer last year) try this.

I love my house but were it to become detached from its terrace and dragged into the woods I think it might look much like this. I could live with that.
  
You can currently stream the whole album on Stereogum. It is released on vinyl and CD on October 17, 2011 by, as if I needed to say so, Bella Union.

EOTR 2011 - Friday from America

Of course there was a wealth of acts from the US appearing over all three days of End Of The Road 2011 but Friday threw up a particularly interesting selection of ones that I really wanted to see performing live representing both coasts and much that comes between. I really enjoyed all of these sets. Here are two of them:

Tipi Stage, early Saturday afternoon - Sarabeth Tucek.

Her second album 'Get Well Soon' was released earlier this summer. I have had her self-titled début since it appeared in 2007 but I have no idea quite how I came to hear of this in the first place. Suffice it to say that it has been listened to consistently ever since. Neither album is really to be described as feel-good music at all, because the tone is too introspective and self-analytical for that. It is however very comforting and, while this might seen an odd thing to say when commenting on a festival performance, perhaps best listened to alone even if alone as part of a crowd and being in a crowd can be a particularly alienating kind of loneliness.
  

The contrast with the next act could hardly have been more pronounced. In a couple of minutes I walked from the indoor intimacy of the Tipi stage to the glorious afternoon sunshine of the Wood Stage and in doing so I travelled from the preoccupations of the Atlantic north-east to those of the beaches of California.

This was feel-good, beach party music. I swear I could hear the sound of surf by the end of the set.

This is Best Coast. Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno. Wood Stage, Saturday afternoon.

  

I couldn't convince the others that this was the way forward so I went along regardless. The whole point of music such as this, as I see it, is that it is frivolous and inconsequential fun. The whole set followed this approach, and it was great. In between the songs random chat involving such things as Snacks' thoughts on life - Snacks is Bethany Cosentino's cat, who appears on the 'Crazy For You' album cover and also in numerous band publicity shots, in case you were wondering!

This could all lead to a diffuse, rambling performance. It took me a few songs to work out why it was not so. One person, and only one person, was in charge of this live show and that was the drummer, Ali Koehler.

Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose

The début album, which also has one of the most astonishingly curious titles of recent times, is finally released on Mute Records on January 24, 2012. If you were not lucky enough to be at EOTR watching this set then let me say something: I had long ago worked out that she was good at what she does but then this was quite something.

Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny....

  

Live on the Garden Stage at End Of The Road Festival 2011, Saturday 3 September.  This is the third time I have seen the whole band live and it just gets better and better. For 2009/2010 coverage of Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny see 'I Will Return, I Promise'.
It is strange, in a very good kind of way, and I trust Mute Records with that.

If you wonder why that is, go listen to Polly Scattergood's 2009 self-titled début album that was also released by Mute. And, by the way, she's busy with the next one and I can't wait for that either.

EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 2)

This was the most amazing thing - the band I thought least likely to... Slow Down, Molasses is one I have known about for some time. 'I'm An Old Believer' but that wasn't going to mean that I might get to see them live unless I went to Canada which, expense aside, I would be quite happy to do. Thanks to EOTR I saw them twice. Here they are playing for the second time on the Tipi Stage at, so my camera tells me, 01:50 on Monday morning.

That I hot-footed it from the Garden Stage to the Tipi Stage, making it just in time for their first set, made the perfect start to Sunday. Why the need to do this? Well I just had to see fellow Canadians Lightning Dust too, also for the first time.
  

  Amber Webber and Joshua Wells are the heart of Lightning Dust.
They are also half of Black Mountain.

EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 1)

I have a soft spot for a great deal of music that comes out of Canada, in case you haven't already noticed, and I posted to this effect recently.
This last weekend I was spoilt rotten. Here are just two of my highlights in no particular order and more will follow on this topic.
I shall start with Timber Timbre. Their world is one of mist and shadows. They shun publicity and certainly would not be found signing CDs in the Rough Trade pop-up shop. This extends to the live show too so luckily, on a glorious sunny Saturday afternoon, they were ensconced in the perpetual twilight of the Big Top Stage.

It was easy for the lighting guys but the unchanging red glow well suited the music too.

I need the album 'Creep On Creeping On'.

Immediately following them on the same stage was a band whose recent album 'Feel It Break' I have been listening to quite often in the last month or two. The prospect of seeing them live therefore excited me but, from experience, such expectation can prove to be a double-edged sword. This time it was not. The band is Austra, its front-woman Katie Stelmanis.
  

Rather electro, rather noir in a slightly Gothic but not-at-all-depressing kind of way and utterly spellbinding. If these had been the only memorable performances by Canadian artists that I saw over the weekend I'd have been just fine about it.
It wasn't quite like that.

End Of The Road 2011

OK. I'm back home, have caught up on some of my accumulated sleep deficit, and so it is time to write something.  Just how good was EOTR 2011?
Well, for once, words fail me. Actions speak louder and so I have just bought my ticket for End Of The Road 2012. See you there? This year it was bigger than before, that is certainly true.  I and most of the people that I spoke to that had also attended in previous years concurred that it was actually even better than before.

In the gardens, just before the start of play on Friday.

A few minutes later...  Secret Sisters on the Garden Stage. What's not to like?

   

Until this year the Garden Stage was the main one, but the new format required a larger one too and that is the Wood Stage.

Much more to come over the next couple of weeks as I'm intending to link this in with more comments about and pictures from the other festivals that I have been to this summer. I also want to overhaul and refresh the contents of the side bar but it all takes time.

Acoustic Moon - 25 August 2011

Yesterday evening was the inaugural edition of a new acoustic event - Acoustic Moon - and I was delighted to be there. The venue is The Full Moon pub in the village of Rudge, just a few miles from Frome and within the same orbit lie Warminster, Westbury and Trowbridge. The nearest planet providing all means of life-support is generally perceived to be Bath.

The next question is where to start. I don't want to make enemies and since the long dead can't Twitter, or I least I hope not, I shall follow the advice of the court: start at the beginning, continue to the end and then stop.
I've never envied the position of an opening act or artist; head-liners may disappoint, spectacularly and in front of a tens-of-thousands of fans at a festival, but the few can be worse than the masses. If you have ever seen a pub band suffer that fâte, and you probably have, then you know exactly what I mean.  My photography was rubbish. You must make an exception for that. My report said that, if I tried harder, I might do better next time.

Please don't let that make you think any less of the artists, or their music, for they were all amazing. The unenviable task of launching Acoustic Moon, just weeks after the final Space Shuttle flight and in the week that saw the abject failure of a multi-million-costing unmanned Russian space mission that launched nothing at all, fell to Saravian.

Mission accomplished. Acoustic Moon is now in earth orbit.
  

There are some things that I have an uncanny knack of doing and one of them is managing to miss Mark Abis when he is is playing live in, or around, Frome. He does so often and yesterday I finally failed to do this too.

Mark Abis - Acoustic Moon 25 August 2011.
  

I don't know if he'd agree with me about this but, in the week that the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary finally included Americana as a noun describing a specific genre of music, he is an extremely good UK purveyor of it.  He might not like this either - one of the songs he played reminded me so much of Jack Johnson that, had I heard it played unannounced on the radio, I would have simply assumed by default that it was.
  
The next to feature were special guests Linda and Mark and, while following the lead, this was in no way Americana; rather five songs from the combined songbook of the great US female vocalists of the mid-twentieth century and should you think that the set-up violates the 'acoustic' moniker then I can reassure you that the Nord keyboard was firmly in piano mode. 

It was certainly dangerous vocal territory carefully navigated.

     

Next to perform was Brighton-based, but Dorset bred, Emily Baker.
There is something that immediately defines but does not confine her and many others, and to an extent her self-written songs too, which has nothing to describe it adequately that appears in the dictionary (Concise Oxford English, of course): There has been much soul-searching for a 'label' for some time and, while I only first heard it a month or so ago, Anglicana will have to do for now and it is certainly a whole lot better than most of the others that have been attached to such things. This music is not entirely traditional, nor is it obviously Celtic inspired, and she is very good at it indeed.

Emily Baker - Acoustic Moon - 25 August 2011.

Just don't ask about the Sturminster mutants... it was all part of the patter, and audience banter, between songs and that genuine and unforced connection is something that very many artists lack.  If you haven't heard the 2011 album 'House Of Cards' then you need to. If you have then you need this, her 2009 début EP, too...

This and the album are available, in real physical format (CD), direct from her website.

  
The evening was completed by duo Jacquelyn Hynes and J Eoin. This was certainly celtic music at its most inventive and yet also often very traditional. The tunes from the ongoing 'Lost in...' project were particularly interesting.

This one was taken when they returned for an encore.

  

There was not a great deal of light to take pictures but, and this is my personal opinion, using a flash would have ruined the atmosphere.  On the other hand can you believe that this much amazing live music is available to you for just £5?
The next Acoustic Moon is at the same venue on Thursday, 29 September and at the same price and I believe that now includes tickets purchased on the door too.
You can now just decide to go on a whim and not pay a premium.  I have actually seen most of the acts appearing at the next event - I'm certain to be going and I don't think that you will be disappointed.

See you there.

Don't Stop Singing - a mixed case of folk - Part 3

There are some people whose work rate never ceases to amaze me. Thea Gilmore is the queen of them. Covering the entire Bob Dylan album 'John Wesley Harding' (1967), taking that as a "live and complete" performance to London's Union Chapel, as well as finishing touring the 2010 original album 'Murphy's Heart' would be enough for most people in one year.
I saw her live at Latitude in July, on the Sunrise Stage, and here she is.

  

Accompanied by her husband Nigel Stonier and both just hoping that their second child didn't chose an inconvenient time and location for its first festival appearance.  So you might think that would be the last one would hear of her in 2011.  Think again.  And this makes even the aforementioned 'John Wesley Harding', of which the great man wholeheartedly approves, apparently, almost seem less brave.
  
It really is a mixed case of folk: at the behest of Sandy Denny's estate she agreed to attempt to write music to go with the unrecorded song lyrics that Denny had completed before her untimely death in April 1978 and thus some eighteen months before Thea herself was born. I find it hard to imagine how anyone might feel when asked to commit to a project of that nature. Apart from the task of writing, and assuming it was done successfully, who might they then ask to collaborate on the recording let alone possible live performance of the work?
'Don't Stop Singing' is released in the UK on October 24. I don't think it is going to be the easiest release of which to contemplate listening. At least not for the first time but then, if there are any capable of pulling it off, it is certainly in the right hands. The first chance to hear any of it, and performed live, will be at the 4th Words and Music Festival, Nantwich, Cheshire, 5-9 October 2011.

Sad Thoughts On Music.

It has been a rotten couple of weeks for music of all kinds and across continents. Strictly in date-order: PIAS fire (commercially speaking), Indiana State Fair and now Pukklepop.


My sympathy goes to everyone who has lost family, friends and their livelihood as a result of these events.
Music is, however, just too important to buckle under this and I think the victims would not want it to do so. All of us, from casual music radio listeners to festival-goers, owe it to the victims and all others concerned that it does not.
It has to be a promise. Forever.

New Music 2011 → Canada → EOTR 2011

"My brain is speeding faster than my mouth can move."

  

Strange but, to purloin a lyric from an EOTR artist in 2010 (not a Canadian one as it happens), it currently applies to my writing too. It isn't something that, for better or for worse, happens all the time.   

I'm not sure where to start and have no idea where it might end but here goes anyway. In one sense it is a little like 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party' but, unlike a rather different Tea Party, shockingly liberal-minded.

OK, that's just plain silly so let us start with the act that takes its name from the study of tea leaves, or if you prefer it coffee grounds, as a means to divine the future. From Canada, based in Toronto but raised in Halifax and formerly known as Ghost Bees (2008-10), it is still twin sisters Romy and Sari Lightman. In 2010, reflecting the changed nature of their music to include diverse new influences, they changed their moniker to Tasseomancy (word definition).

  

They release their début album under this name, Ulalume, on Toronto-based independent label  Out Of This Spark on August 30, 2011 in Canada. That it is also the title of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, who was never the most conventional and cheerful of souls, should serve as due warning.  We might well be looking at a 2011 take on 'New Albums For Autumn' here - and quite possibly a premature trip into Halloween play-list territory too.
  

On the face of it this might seem to have little to do with End of The Road 2011 but that may not be the case.  Two bands, both of which I want to see live for the first time, are booked to appear at EOTR 2011. The first of them is Austra, which is touring the electronic-biased album 'Feel It Break'.

  

Creep On Creepin' On - Timber Timbre (2011)

      

The Lightmans are an integral part of Austra's touring line up and Timber Timbre, that produced and also guested on Ulalume, is also performing. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

New Music 2011 - A mixed case of folk - Part 2

To continue the theme from yesterday I shall add that one long-term characteristic of folk music is the permutations and combinations game. Jon Boden and John Spiers may be two elevenths of Bellowhead - indeed the founding ones - but that does not mean the resulting endeavour has subsumed them (or indeed the other nine members).  They have also been performing as a duo - more or less - for a decade now, releasing several LPs in that time, so perhaps some kind of simple 'Greatest Hits' is in order?

Not at all. 'The Works' (Navigator Records) has been released instead and it throws some surprises not least of which include the guests: Eliza Carthy, Maddy Prior, Martin Simpson and many others. Available now, it was released in July 2011.
  
This is the track list:

1. Tom Padget
2. Horn Fair
3. Gooseberry Bush/Laudanum Bunches
4. The Birth Of Robin Hood
5. The Cheshire Waltz
6. Brown Adam
7. Rochdale Coconut Dance
8. Old Maui
9. Haul Away
10. Bold Sir Ryles
11. Prickle-eye Bush

This next album in this post is another collaborative compilation and will be released by Shrewsbury Folk Fest on September 5, 2011.

You will no doubt spot the theme here: some artists link the LPs mentioned in this and yesterday's post.  It is to be an 18-track CD - accompanied by an 18-track DVD - and I believe the price is going to be quite reasonable.
This is the track list:

1. Mining For Songs
2. Mother England
3. Jeff Sturgeon's / I Like You, You're Common / When Lenny Met Andy Met Patsy
4. Cecil's Greatest Hits Vol.1
5. Dear Kimber
6. Lover's Lament
7. The CooCoo Bird
8. Meadows of Dan
9. Ol' Groundhog
10. Black Mountain Lullaby
11. Child's Song;  Barbara Allen
12. Aunt Maria
13. Beautiful Maud
14. Veggie In The Holler
15. Earl Brand
16. Ghost Of Songs
17. The Great Divide
18. Maud & Cecil

Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2011 takes place from 26 - 29 August and, looking at the line-up, my ideas on which festivals to consider for next year are looking more complicated with each passing week.

New Music 2011 - A mixed case of folk - Part 1

A few of the LPs (I still like to call them that, whatever their format) that I am to mention here might have appeared in these pages before, if only in passing.  Many of the artists most certainly have been mentioned and, for those that only recall the 1960s/1970s blossoming of folk and new folk, there are some returnees too.

I shall start with the latest LP, 'Saturnine' by Jackie Oates. It is her fourth solo recording unless I am mistaken. It immediately caught my attention because I am listening to her previous one 'Hyperboreans' (2009) so frequently at the moment. It will be released by ECC Records on September 12, 2011.

  
Whilst it has a great deal of influence from the south west of England, where she is now based, I can't imagine that the final song 'Fortune Turns The Wheel' is anything other than a version of that traditional song from the north east of England.

I have definitely mentioned this next LP in passing. It is already released.

'Adelphi Has To Fly' - Lucy Ward (Navigator Records, 2011)

  

This is her début album, at least commercially, and is a mixture of new songs and brave interpretations of older ones and its creator comes from the vicinity of Derby.  The fact that it is released by Navigator Records says quite a lot about it in my opinion.

To be continued, probably in several parts --- but with it comes a thought on continuity:

Back in the days of the aforementioned first folk revival there was a label that was a huge part of it. It is still going strong three decades down the line; it is Topic Records.

Sunday listening (and some more new music)...

Still feeling a bit of the post-festival blues but at least I'm not tired any more. Still looking through the photos that I have taken in the last couple of weeks and listening to... well a strange mixture really. Part of it by, or influenced by, artists that I have heard live recently but interspersed with other stuff, new and old.  Maybe the whole Amy Winehouse thing has had influences in such matters but I seem to have dug out stuff by those who expired prematurely. Alan Hull's 1973 solo album 'Pipedream' being something that was long overdue a revival, once I could find it in my collection that is.
In fact you could make the case that today's playlist is pretty gloomy and introspective but, to me at least, it doesn't seem that way. The album 'Violet Cries', as well as being by Esben and The Witch and a band that I have seen live at Latitude 2010 and 2011, is almost certain to appear on my end of year 'best of' lists.  Some acts work better on some stages but, all things considered, I'm not sure that any can beat the Sunset Stage at Latitude, even if it is raining.

Rachel Davies of Esben & The Witch. Friday, Sunset Stage, Latitude 2011.

I can think of a couple of other albums that might well be tussling with the above in those lists.  This is one that I haven't even heard yet. That sounds stupid I suppose; but then buying new music totally unheard is something that I enjoy. The problem is that the more involved I become the more I hear, which actually makes it harder to do. I've read some reviews - summery music with female vocals - of the début album from Seapony.

'Go With Me' - Seapony.  Hardly Art Records - out now on vinyl, CD and download.

  

Another strong contender is by a band that I saw at EOTR 2010 and again last weekend at Truck 2011. The début album 'Gracious Tide, Take Me Home' will be released by the Tyneside six-piece Lanterns On The Lake on Bella Union Records in early Autumn. 

  

They played a few tracks from it on the Clash Stage at Truck last Sunday, which combined with the EPs that I already have makes this a near certainty. They are also appearing at End of The Road 2011 too. Whilst on the subject of bands touring début albums the first act that I saw at Latitude this year was Montreal's BRAIDS, with the recently released 'Native Speaker' (Kanine Records - vinyl, CD and download) - what a great way to start a festival and again on the delightful Sunset Stage.

   

This stage was also the setting for the best headline show that I have seen so far in 2011, about which more to follow, and once again an act on the trail with their first album offering.

Friday evening with no live music.

It seems strange. It is not actually remotely unusual but after two weekends spent at festivals it suddenly does: normality has become slightly surreal, which is interesting in itself.  I wonder if, when I wake tomorrow morning, I shall be surprised to discover that I am not in a tent or even inside a sleeping bag?  To all of you at festivals this weekend, and during August too, have a great time.  I'm taking a break (from festivals, well probably) until the first weekend of September and that, of course, is End Of The Road 2011.
So that means, as well as catching up with household chores, more time to explore all the non-festival aspects of music and perhaps to write. I shall also attempt to sort through the pictures that I have taken, all that I have heard and seen, my thoughts and memories, if only to divine just what it meant to me.

So I'm gonna sleep with the light on

 And I'm gonna drink in the afternoon.
  

Here is an interesting question. What music would you play if an hour was yours to fill and the mission was to convert others to the virtues of physical music? 

New Music 2011 - Evi Vine - and so the morning comes

I've not added a post like this for a few weeks but that is not to say that I haven't been keeping an eye and an ear open for new delights. This one is something I can't resist mentioning.

I'm not going to say anything more just now. Listen and you might understand why.

Acoustic @ Truck 2011

Truck is certainly not a folk festival, indeed it doesn't pretend to try to be one, but given the contents of this post you could be forgiven for wondering. This is not a complete list by any means, rather just some of the acoustic artists that I saw.  It did however give rise to much discussion about the minefield that is musical sub-genre when discussing such things - be they new folk, Anglicana, or some other name you choose.  Whatever else they share (or don't) one common thread in such songs and many traditional ones is a sense of place and belonging be that from the perspective of being there or, for whatever reason, of not being (able to be) there.  Is is nicely summed up in a line from a song performed by this first artist. I think that it also sums up the spirit of a good festival too.
    

"With your sense of dislocation you make the perfect travelling companion."
  

Roddy Woomble - Main Stage - Saturday afternoon.

Most of the set naturally comprised his recent solo material but the above lyric is from the Idlewild song 'Take Me Back To The Islands'.  He and his family now live on Mull.

  

Other inveterate wanderers featured in the line up. Duo Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou are as likely to be found touring by canal boat or camper van than the more modern means of so-called luxury transport.

The Clash Stage was curated by label Heavenly Records on the Saturday (of which phenomenon more later) and they were appearing on that bill.
On Sunday the same stage was host to a selection of artists chosen by Bella Union Records, a label that I have mentioned many times in posts before, and this is one recent addition to their family of artists.
  

Alessi's Ark - Clash Stage - Sunday afternoon.
  

Please don't just take my word for it:

"(She) played with a delicacy — and a casualness — that would simply be impossible anywhere else here (at SXSW)."  

New York Times
  

This fall she is returning to the US as main support artist for Laura Marling's headline tour.  

All in all four stages were involved in this and here is an artist that has been on my want-to-see list for some time. On Saturday the Last FM Stage was dedicated to acts that, in one way or another, are part of Oxford's Blessing Force Collective.

 Rhosyn - Last FM Stage - Saturday afternoon.

  

While this next picture is far from the best the same can hardly be said of the assembled line up!

Wood Stage - Saturday evening.

Kris Drever and Heidi Talbot both performed sets that evening in this smallest of venues. This was taken during the latter but, as the assembled cast was much the same, you will have to take my word for that. I'd call this a super-group: L - R: Roddy Woomble (backing vocal), John McCusker (fiddle and, on one song, whistle), Heidi Talbot (vocals) and Kris Drever (guitar and backing vocal).

  

The tendency of folk musicians to combine in new permutations is legendary, and you could start a multi-dimensional tree starting with these alone, but Truck had some collaborative surprises beyond that to come later.

Lastly, and back to the Main Stage where this post started, this set did spawn some of the aforementioned sub-genre discussions and for very good reasons too.

Michele Stodart - Main Stage - Sunday lunchtime.

    

Eclectic and astonishing are two adjectives that I might apply to all of this and yet it was just one facet of what I saw last weekend.

Festivals are, to an extent, what you choose to make of them. I'm fairly convinced that many present paid their ticket price and spent almost the entire time drinking and chatting in the camp site.  Far be it for me to criticize, and not least because it made the stages less crowded, but it is not the route that I choose to travel.